


master of the elements, daughter of the moon

by AlmondRose



Series: avatar yuniverse [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avatar Yue (Avatar), F/F, F/M, M/M, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26429446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmondRose/pseuds/AlmondRose
Summary: eighty four years after the beginning of the war, aang succumbs to the iceberg, and across the world, princess yue is born.
Relationships: Sokka/Suki/Yue (Avatar), Sokka/Suki/Yue/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Yue (Avatar), Suki/Yue (Avatar), Yue/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: avatar yuniverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1969339
Comments: 34
Kudos: 82
Collections: AtLA <25k fics to read





	master of the elements, daughter of the moon

**Author's Note:**

> the major character death is just the avatar cycle, doing it's thing

  
  


The morning is bright and cold, the ice is sharp, and the water is smooth. It is a perfect day for fishing, and Bato says so. 

Hakoda agrees, pushing his oar through the water, as Bato pulls in another fish. They’ve already got quite a few, and Hakoda thinks that everyone will be pleased with the feast tonight, Kya especially, and Hakoda’s stomach twists when he remembers why. 

“It’s such a nice day,” he says. Bato looks at him funny. 

“Yeah, it is,” he says. “But I already said that. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” Hakoda says. “I’m fine, Kya’s fine, everyone’s...fine.”

“Okay, sure,” Bato says, raising an eyebrow, before he turns to look out over the water. Bato trades his oar for a spear and looks over the side of the boat for any fish swimming near the top. Hakoda takes a deep breath. If he doesn’t say it now, he’ll lose courage, and he’d told Kya he would tell Bato _today._

“Kya’s pregnant,” Hakoda says, eyeing a fish that’s swimming a little too deep. There’s a splash and Hakoda turns to see that Bato has dropped his spear into the water. He grabs it before it can sink, and then turns to look at him, wide-eyed. 

“Really?” he says. Hakoda nods, and then he has an armful of best friend, Bato throwing his arms around him. “Congratulations! You’re going to be a father!”

“I am!” Hakoda replies, squeezing Bato back. Bato pulls away.

“How are you feeling about it?” Hakoda picks back up his oar and begins to row them away, heading into more unfamiliar waters. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m excited, but I’m nervous, too. Who has a kid in times of war?”

“You were born in times of war,” Bato points out. “And so was I, and so was Kya. We turned out okay.”

“I already love that kid so much,” Hakoda says. “I just want them to be safe.” His stomach always turns and clenches thinking about it--what if he has a boy, and they have to go off to fight? Can he watch his son die? If he has a daughter, she’d hypothetically be safer--but what if the Fire Nation attack? What if the kid is a waterbender--what then? 

“Stop worrying,” Bato says. “If you’re worried about that, you’ll already be an excellent father.” Bato smiles, and Hakoda knows he’s right. He resolves to push his worries, away, but then--

“What the fuck is that?”

“What the fuck is what?” Bato says, turning around, and they both look at the looming iceberg, ahead of them. It’s tall, bigger than both of them stacked on top of each other, and glowing a with a soft blue light. 

As they draw closer, Hakoda makes out dark shapes inside the ice. A huge, hulking shape--some sort of animal, preserved in the ice? And tucked under that--a boy. 

A small boy, with glowing arrows on his forehead and hands, stuck in the ice. 

“Holy shit,” Bato says, and they get off their canoe to walk closer to the iceberg. Hakoda puts his hand on it, and even through his mitten he can feel some sort of energy, humming under the ice. 

“Do you think he’s alive in there?” Bato asks, and Hakoda doesn’t have an answer, but he reaches for Bato’s club anyway. 

“We have to get him out,” he says, and he wacks the ice with the club. A sizable crack appears. Bato takes a spear and sticks in into the crack, clearly trying to make it bigger, and Hakoda hits the iceberg again, then again, and then a burst of blue light shoots out of the ice and a blast of energy or something bursts out, blasting Hakoda and Bato back a few feet. Hakoda lands on top of Bato, and once the light dims and the energy fades, he scrambles to his feet, running towards the ice.

The ice is shattered, with the boy laying limply on the ground and the beast next to him. Hakoda kneels beside the boy, who must be eleven or twelve. He is dressed in an orange outfit of some lightweight cloth and has blue tattoos on his head and hands. He’s bald, and has paler skin than someone from the Water Tribes. Hakoda touches him with trembling hands and finds that he’s ice cold. 

“He’s shivering,” Bato says. 

“We have to go home and get help,” Hakoda says, gathering the boy in his arms. 

“You do that, I’ll stay with this thing,” Bato says, pointing at the shaggy mound of animal. “Send someone to come get me once the kid is safe.”

“I will,” Hakoda says, standing, and they clasp arms briefly before Hakoda runs back to the canoe, carrying the boy with him. 

At home, they don’t know what to make of him. He wakes, briefly, and mumbles something about “Appa”. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, kiddo,” Hakoda says, leaning closer to the boy. 

“My….bison…” he says, his voice a pale whisper. 

“The big white thing? He’s fine,” Hakoda says. “Appa’s fine.”

“Good,” the boy says, and then he drifts to sleep again. The healers force Hakoda to go to bed, and when he wakes up and comes back to the igloo they’ve put the boy in, he finds Kya sitting beside him, stroking his forehead. 

“He won’t eat,” she whispers. 

“Did he wake up again?” Hakoda asks, coming to sit by her. 

“He said something about the Avatar,” Kya says, her brows furrowed. She turns to look up at Hakoda. “You know...air nomads wore orange.”

“Just because air nomads wore orange doesn’t mean nobody else can wear orange,” Hakoda says, because people have been whispering about this all day. “Besides, it would mean he’d been in that iceberg for a hundred years.”

“I know,” Kya says. “I can’t help but think about his mother.”

“I know,” Hakoda says. “I know.”

The boy doesn’t wake again, and two days later he stops breathing, as well. 

And as the Southern Water Tribe mourns, across the world in the Northern Water Tribe, the people rejoice, as the chief’s wife has had her baby at last. 

  
\----  
  


Yue emerges from the turtle-seal hole, pulling herself and her bag through. She bends the icy water away from her clothes and bag, glad to be dry, and pulled her bag over her shoulder. She checks the pouch at her hip to make sure it is full of clean water, despite the fact that she is literally always surrounded by water. You can never be too careful. 

Now that she is past the wall, Yue makes her way down to the water. She jumps onto a floating piece of ice and uses waterbending to propel the ice away from the tribe. She knows how to avoid all the night patrols and she will stay vigilant until she reaches the Earth Kingdom.

Her hand reaches up to touch her neck, the place where the betrothal necklace is. With her free hand, she takes it off and looks at it. The design is okay, she supposes, but she’s only fourteen. She isn’t ready to be married, and especially not to some guy she barely knows.

Besides, her father had told her she had a duty to her people, and that was why she had to get married. Yue _understood_ duty, and she knew that her duty wasn’t to the Northern Water Tribe, but to the entire world. 

So she left, and Yue thinks of her father, and her mother, and of the waterbending classes she is leaving behind, and even to the boy she told she would marry. Maybe she still will, she thinks, just...later.

Her heart wrenches, and a tear slides down her face, but Yue is sure she is doing the right thing, and so she continues on. 

\----

The boy has a Fire Nation boat, and he’s angry and awkward and kind, and half of his face is burnt off, his face still-healing, and when Yue sits next to him he’s warm. She doesn’t know what to make of him. 

But after they ran into each other, a week after Yue left home, he offered to take her to the Earth Kingdom, and she agreed. His boat is smaller than some of the ones at home but bigger than a canoe, and he’s dressed in furs to keep him warm in the north. She doesn’t know his name, and he doesn’t know hers. 

She spends the fourth day they’re together staring at his face, and when he finally snaps at her, she raises her hands in defense. 

“Sorry,” she says. “But I’m a healer. If you want, I can try to help your….burn.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, narrowing his good eye suspiciously. He sits down on the bench across from her, and she takes off her gloves. She bends a little bit of the icy water out of the ocean and makes it float in front of her. 

She knows it’s a risk to waterbend in front of a stranger from another nation, and she knows she could be helping someone who is the enemy. But he was _burned,_ so he’s been hurt by the Fire Nation, too. And she can help, so she will.

“Waterbending has healing properties?” the boy asks, raising his good eyebrow. She nods. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, it’s not for everyone to know,” she says. “But if you want, I can try to help you.”

“Why?” he asks suspiciously. 

“You’re helping me by taking me to the Earth Kingdom,” she says. “But even if you weren’t, I’d offer to help. It’s the right thing to do.”

“You don’t even know me,” the boy says. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“I _can_ help, so I must,” Yue says. “It’s my duty.”

“Your honor,” the boy mutters. 

“Yes,” she says. “My honor. If you don’t let me help you, I’ll respect that, but I would like to help.”

“Fine,” he says, and she takes the bit of water still floating in her hands between her and moves it to his face. 

“It’ll be cold,” she warns, before the water makes contact and she focuses on healing. He flinches from the cold, but then he relaxes as the water glows. His eyes close and she pours her energy into it. When she steps away, his face is still burned, still scarred--but it’s healed. It looks like an old injury instead of a new one. 

The boy reaches a hand to his face. 

“The scar is still there,” Yue says, dropping the water back into the ocean. “But it should be--better.”

“Thank you,” he whispers, his hand still touching the scarring, and Yue nods, sits down. They pass time in silence before he says, “This is gonna sound weird, but I need to ask--have you seen the Avatar?”

“The Avatar?” Yue asks, forcing a laugh. “You think I’ve seen the Avatar?”

“No,” he says. “No, I don’t, but I just wanted to--to make sure, I guess.”

Her shoulders relax. “No, I’ve never seen the Avatar, nor have I even met a firebender or earthbender before. Or airbender, but nobody’s met one of those.”

“Right,” the boy says, and then he looks at her appraisingly. “Before today, I’d never met a waterbender.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not very good at it,” Yue confesses. She’s okay at healing, but she’s seen what some of the boys learn, and she’d be dreadful in a fight. 

When they dock, it’s next to a Fire Nation warship. Yue eyes it with dread, but she thinks that as long as the boy doesn’t say that she’s a waterbender--

“Come with me,” the boy says. While Yue got off the boat, he took off his furs, and she sees Fire Nation robes. He’s standing with his back to the warship, trusting. “Help me find the Avatar.”

Her eyes widen. 

“I can’t,” she says, shaking her head. 

“Is it because of your business in the Earth Kingdom? Whatever it is, I can help you!” the boy says. 

“No, I--I can’t go on a _Fire Nation warship_ ,” Yue says, her voice going shrill. “I need to leave. I’m sorry.”

“No!” the boy yells, though Yue doesn’t think he’s really yelling at her. She backs away and he stamps his foot. “Please, come with me!”

“I can’t!” Yue says, and the boy yells and fire pours out of his fists, but he doesn’t try to stop her from leaving. 

\-----

Yue heads as south as she can, figuring that if she stays to the north her father could find her easier. As she travels, she practices bending water into shapes, and freezing it on command, and making it dance around her. It is lonely, traveling by herself, but she finds good company in the people who let her stay the night at their houses or let her ride on their carts with them. 

By the time she gets to Chin, many months have passed and Yue just wants to call someplace _home,_ again. She feels restless, and as if she is not doing enough. 

She stays in Chin for a few days. On the third day, she is out buying food in the market when she hears a pair of children talking about Avatar Day. 

“Excuse me,” she says, approaching them. “Did you say Avatar Day? You have a holiday for the Avatar?”

“Yeah!” one boy says. “We make big statues of Kyoshi ‘n Roku, and then we _burn_ ‘em!”

“Burn them?” Yue asks. “Why?”

“Kyoshi murdered our founder, Chin the Great,” the other boy says. “The Avatar is the worst!”

“Yeah!” the other kid says.

“Oh,” Yue says. “I see.” She pauses for a minute. “Do you know if there’s anything more southernward than here that’s still in Earth Kingdom territory?”

“Not on the mainland,” one of the boys says. 

“There’s a couple islands between here and the Water Tribe,” the other boy says. 

Yue thanks them and packs her things. She finds a trading ship and gives them the last of her money. Luckily this far south they take Water Tribe money--there were places in the center of the Earth Kingdom that didn’t. 

She gets off at the nearest island. It’s small and homey and Yue pleads to Tui and La that they will be nice here, that there will be earthbenders, that people won’t ask questions. 

Yue helps unload the boxes for the trading ship and stumbles over her own feet on a particularly heavy one, but then someone catches the box on the other end and helps her lower it. Yue looks at her savior--a girl in a long green dress, with white and red facepaint on. Yue thinks the girl is probably her own age, and something about her outfit looks...familiar. 

“Thanks,” Yue says. 

“You’re welcome,” the girl says, grinning at her. “Are you working with the traders, or are you coming to stay here?”

“Staying here, hopefully, although to be honest, I don’t know where ‘here’ is,” Yue confesses. The girl’s smile widens.

“Welcome to Kyoshi Island, traveler,” she says. At the name of the island, Yue smiles back. 

\-----

Six months after Yue arrives on Kyoshi Island, she wakes up to find the other bed in her room empty. It’s the middle of the night, and Yue watches the curtains flutter against the open window for a minute before she gets out of her bed and goes to the window, putting her legs on the sill and bracing her hands on the sides of the window. She stands up and turns around, taking her hands off the window and putting them on the roof above her head. She pulls herself up onto the roof and crawls to Suki’s side. 

It’s a nice night, with the full moon shining brightly over them. Yue tilts her face up towards the light, and feels the cool moonlight wash over her. 

“The moon saved me,” Yue says, breaking their silence. “When I was a baby, I was really sick, and my parents prayed to the moon spirit, Tui, and Tui saved me. That’s why my hair is white.”

“That’s really cool,” Suki says. “You never talk about your parents--how did they react when you found out you were an earthbender?”

Yue closes her eyes, inhales. She lets out her breath slowly. “They didn’t. I left pretty quick after I figured it out.”

“Why?” Suki asks. 

“Suki, I’m 100% Water Tribe,” Yue says, turning to her. “My mom and dad are both from the Northern Water Tribe. I don’t have _any_ Earth Kingdom blood in me.”

“What are you saying?” Suki asks. “You’re an earthbender--I’ve seen you earthbend!”

Yue looks at the water, puddling against the edge of the roof from yesterday’s rainfall, and she points at it, lifting it from the gutter. She forms it into a perfect orb, and then flings the orb out at the grass below them in a million different directions.

“You...you can waterbend,” Suki says. Her eyes are wide, wider than Yue’s ever seen. Yue nods and looks at her hand. 

“I saw firebending once…” she says, and she thinks of the boy who had wanted her to come with him, the boy who was searching for the Avatar, the only person she’s ever heard of even talking about the Avatar. His firebending had been full of rage, and Yue doesn’t really have much rage. She thrusts her hand out hopefully, but nothing happens. “Never mind.”

“You’re the Avatar,” Suki whispers. Yue closes her eyes, nods. 

“I am,” she says, and Suki throws her arms around her. 

“That means we have hope,” she says. “Hope in the war against the Fire Nation.”

“Yeah,” Yue whispers, and then they’re both crying, crying and holding each other as Tui watches over them. 

Once they settle, a little, Yue wipes Suki’s tears, then her own. 

“I’ve never told anyone before,” she says. “Spirits, it’s such a _relief.”_

“I’m here for you,” Suki says. “I’m here for you one hundred percent. We can--we can leave, and we’ll find you an earthbending master, and I can keep training you, and I can protect you, and we’ll do it. We’ll end the war.”

“We will?” Yue asks, crying again, and Suki nods, fierce and determined. 

“We will,” she says, grabbing Yue’s hands, and it sounds like a promise.

\-----

The next morning, Suki tells Riko, Suki’s co-leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, that she’s leaving, and Riko gives her a hug and tells her to be safe, and Yue watches Suki pack up her fans and facepaint and put them in her bag. Yue puts her own fans in her pack as well, and when Suki comes to stand at her side, dressed in a simple green tunic and pants, they leave the building Yue had called home for the last six months together. 

“Kyoshi Warriors leave all the time, but I never thought I’d be one of the ones who go,” Suki says wistfully, and Yue reaches for her hand, squeezes. 

“You don’t have to,” she says. 

“No, I’m going to,” Suki says, and they walk down the path, towards the water, but then Yue hears a commotion and turns her head, then tilts it up, her jaw dropping. 

Over their heads is a huge, white, six-legged animal, flying without wings, coming to land in the path before them. 

\------

The riders introduce themselves as Sokka and Katara, and the animal is introduced to them as Appa. 

“What _is_ that thing?” Suki asks, hands on her hips. 

“He’s my bison!” Sokka says, throwing his arms around the beast. Appa has a big saddle on his back made of bone and furs and a little wood, obviously made with Water Tribe influence. Sokka is around Yue’s age, and Katara is younger, and both are still in their Water Tribe furs. 

“He’s an Air Nomad creature,” Katara says. “Or at least we _think_ he is. He might be the last of his kind.”

“Yes,” Yue says, reaching her hand out to touch one of Appa’s soft legs. “Yes, he’s a sky bison. Air Nomads kept them as companions.”

“How do you know that?” Katara asks, eyes wide, and Yue finds that she doesn’t really know the answer, except--she _does_ contain the soul of countless airbenders before her. 

“I’ve read about them,” she says. Katara looks at her funny but accepts the answer. 

“So what brings you to Kyoshi Island?” Suki asks. 

“I’m a waterbender,” Katara explains. “The last in the Southern Water Tribe. We’re headed north to find a waterbending teacher.”

“What do you want to learn how to do?” Yue asks, raising her eyebrow. 

“Everything!” Katara exclaims. “Whatever I can learn.”

“Well, in the Northern Water Tribe they only let girl waterbenders learn how to heal,” Yue says. “Only the boys can become true masters.”

“What? That’s terrible!” Katara cries, and Sokka says, “Well, it’s a good thing we found out _now_ and before we could get any further. We’ll just go back home.”

“No!” Yue cries. Something about them--she needs to stay with them. But she can’t afford to head back to the Southern Water Tribe--she needs to learn how to earthbend. Suki, Sokka, and Katara all look at her strangely. Yue looks around--they’re alone, the other villagers having left once they saw Suki talking to the strangers. She takes a deep breath, and she bends water out of the puddle on the road beside them. 

Katara looks at her in awe, and Sokka’s jaw drops. 

“They may only teach us healing back home, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t figured some other stuff out,” Yue says, and she makes eye contact with Katara. The other girl nods, determined, and Yue tosses the ball of water to her. Katara catches it in the air between her hands, holds it for a minute, and then drops it to the floor. “I can teach you.”

“That’s perfect!” Sokka says. “We can stay here, and I’m close enough to home that I can pop on back to check on them whenever!”

“No,” Yue says. “We need to--I need to--” She looks at Suki, helpless, and Suki’s eyes harden. 

“I’m an earthbender,” Suki declares, crossing her arms. “And I need to go learn how. Yue and I were actually about to leave before you showed up.”

“Oh,” Katara says. Then she brightens. “Sokka! Could we take Suki and Yue on Appa to find earthbenders? Yue can teach me how to waterbend!”

Sokka sighs. 

“Katara, that doesn’t really help us defend our village,” he says. 

“Yes it does!” Katara protests. “That Fire Nation ship only came because they saw you flying around on Appa, so you need to _stay away_ from the Water Tribe until I know how to waterbend! Besides, maybe Yue could come help defend us after I’ve mastered waterbending and Suki masters earthbending.”

“Maybe,” Yue says, thinking privately that she will probably not do that, and Suki grabs her arm and pulls her away a little to hiss in her ear. 

“Are you sure about this? These guys are total strangers!”

“There’s something about them...Suki, I can feel it in my gut. We can trust them. We _need_ to be with them.” Suki looks uncertain, and she bites her lip. 

“Fine,” she says. “But they’re _going_ to find out that I can’t earthbend.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Yue promises, and then they turn back to Sokka and Katara. Katara nudges her brother. 

“Yue and Suki, would it be alright by you if we took you to find an earthbending teacher on Appa, in exchange for some waterbending lessons?” Sokka asks, clearly reluctant.

“We’d love to,” Yue says.

“I feel obligated to mention that a Fire Nation warship was chasing us,” Sokka says. 

“I’m sure once we get to the mainland we’ll lose them,” Suki says. “And besides, we aren’t doing anything wrong.”

Yue remembers the Fire Nation boy who was looking for the Avatar, but she doesn’t say anything about that. 

They climb up onto Appa’s saddle, Sokka reaching out hands to help both Yue and Suki, the latter of which ignores him and the former which accepts his help. Sokka then slides off the saddle and onto Appa’s head, grabbing the tie from between his horns and saying, “Appa, yip yip.”

The bison leaps into the sky, and for a second everything is unsteady, before the flight becomes smooth and something in Yue whispers that it’s _right._

“Holy shit, this thing really can fly!” Suki exclaims, and Katara says, “Can you believe Sokka’s had Appa for fifteen years and only realized he could fly, like, a _month_ ago?”

“In my defense, I don’t often say ‘yip yip’ without a reason to,” Sokka shouts over his shoulder, and Katara giggles. Suki rolls her eyes fondly and Yue puts her hand on the wood of the saddle, feeling something old and ancient in the wood. She closes her eyes to try and feel it, wondering if it’s something to do with spirits, and when she opens her eyes again there’s a ghost in front of her. 

“Hi!” the ghost says, leaning towards her and waving. It’s a little boy, younger than Katara, wearing some sort of outfit Yue’s never seen before, with arrows on his forehead. She knows he’s a ghost because he’s glowing, and see-through. 

“Hi?” Yue says, and Suki and Katara turn to look at her. 

“Hello?” Katara says, confused. 

“I’m Aang!” the ghost says, ignoring the people behind him. He holds out his hand, then retracts it. “Oops, sorry, we probably can’t touch, huh?”

“What are you doing here?” Yue asks him. “Who are you?”

“I was the Avatar before you, Yue,” Aang says, and then he gasps. “Appa!” He gets on the saddle and embraces it. “Good to see you, buddy!”

“You know him?” Yue asks. 

“Who are you talking to?” Suki asks. She and Katara both look alarmed. Yue’s afraid to make Aang disappear, so she ignores them. 

“Yeah!” Aang says. “He’s my bison!”

“I don’t understand,” Yue says. “How is he still alive? How are you still a kid? The Air Genocide happened a hundred years ago.”

“Oh,” Aang says, and he sits up, crossing his legs before him. “I preserved myself in an iceberg for 85 years, and then someone broke me out. But I wasn’t ready to come out, or maybe I was never meant to, and I died. And you were born!”

“Oh,” Yue says. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Aang says. “I’m glad you have Appa with you. You’ll need him.”

“Okay,” Yue says, confused. 

“And I want you to remember to look past first appearances, and to ask for help if you need it!” Aang says. “And good luck earthbending--I never learned how, but it seems pretty hard. Also, I think you can tell your friends that you’re the Avatar. They seem pretty trustworthy.”

“Thank you,” Yue says, bewildered, and Aang bows to her before he vanishes. Yue’s vision brightens, somehow, and she notes that Katara, Suki, and Sokka are all staring at her like she’s insane. 

“Sorry,” she says. “Sorry. I had a vision.”

“A vision?” Katara asks. 

“If you’re seeing things, maybe we should get you to a doctor?” Sokka says. 

“Was it related to what you told me last night?” Suki asks, and Yue says, “Yes. Sokka, where did you get Appa?”

“My dad and his best friend were out fishing one day and came across this kid in an iceberg, alongside Appa. They broke the iceberg and the boy died, but Appa survived. They think the kid was an airbender. And then I was born a little while later, and Appa and I hit it off!” Sokka exclaims. “It’s a crazy story, but a firebender kicked me into the snow like four hours ago and then I flew away on my pet bison, so…”

“Yeah,” Yue says, exhaling. She remembers what Aang said. “Guys, that wasn’t just an airbender who your dad fished out of the ice. It was the Avatar.”

“What?” Sokka says, his jaw dropping, and Katara pumps her fist in the air. 

“I knew it!” she says. 

“But that means there’s another Avatar out there who’s, like, _my_ age!” Sokka says. 

“They can end the war!” Katara exclaims.

“We have to find them!” Sokka says. “How does the cycle go? Earth, air, water, fire? Or is it fire, water, air, earth?”

“Water, earth, fire, air,” Katara recites. She grins at Sokka dangerously. “If you could bend, it could be _you._ ”

“Maybe it _is_ me!” Sokka says. “Maybe I just haven’t tried hard enough to waterbend--”

“It’s not you,” Suki interrupts. 

“How do you know?” Sokka asks. Yue and Suki exchange a long, heated look. Yue would like to repeat her trick of the night before--bending an element when your companions know you can bend a different one--but she doesn’t have any rocks on her, and she’s not very good at earthbending, besides. 

“Because it’s me,” she says instead. “That vision I just had? It was Aang, the previous Avatar before me. He was telling me about how Appa used to be his.”

“Spirits,” Katara breathes. 

“We can end the war,” Sokka says, his mouth open. 

“That’s what I said,” Suki says, grinning. “For the record, I’m not an earthbender.”

“That’s why I need a teacher,” Yue says. “That’s why we couldn’t go to the Southern Water Tribe with you.”

“Well, the firebender who came after Appa was definitely looking for the Avatar,” Sokka says. “So it’ll be dangerous.”

“We’ll be fine,” Katara says fiercely. “Sokka, you’re a great warrior. I’m going to be the best waterbender ever. Yue’s the Avatar. I’m sure Suki can fight.”

“Oh, I can fight all right,” Suki says, nodding. 

“Between the four of us, we can kill the Firelord and end the war,” Katara says. “I’m sure of it.”

Yue isn’t sure that four people and an air bison is enough, that it could ever be enough, but Katara says it with so much conviction--and Suki had said the same thing last night, too, hadn’t she?--that Yue feels like they have to try. 

\----

They reach the mainland and stop by a river. Yue begins to explain to Katara what she’s learned about lifting the water from the river, about shaping it into what you want it to be. Katara’s a quick learner, and when they decide to take a break, Yue sees that Sokka and Suki were sparring, and Suki has, of course, kicked his ass. 

He’s on the floor, panting, staring up at her with stars in his eyes, and she reaches down to help him up. 

“That was amazing,” he says. 

“Six months ago, Yue didn’t even know how to throw a punch, and now--” Suki only gives that much warning before she tosses Yue one of her fans and leaps at her. Yue dodges and blocks and attacks and twirls. She’s nowhere on Suki’s level, but she spent the last six months training and working harder than she’s ever worked before, and she holds her own. Suki backs her up towards the river, and Yue gets an idea. 

She sends a blast of water at her friend, and Suki nearly drops her fan, surprised, but she quickly realizes what’s happening. Yue doesn’t really know how to fight with waterbending, but she manages to splash Suki a few times, then she stomps her foot in an effort to anchor herself to gather more water, and the earth in front of her rises, blocking Suki’s attack. Suki laughs breathlessly and Yue spreads water on the ground, freezes it, and lets Suki slip and fall and grab her skirt and pull her into the river. 

They come up, laughing, and Katara exclaims “That was incredible!”

“Wow,” Sokka says. He looks awestruck. “That is--wow.” Yue smiles at him. 

\----

The days pass like this: Yue trains Katara and Suki trains Sokka. They fly on Appa, and stop in various towns. Inevitably, one of the four of them gets pulled into a crusade, and they have to stay to help the town--save them from spirits or a volcano or the Fire Nation. They have to save themselves from pirates, and a confusing swamp, and nosy people who ask too many questions about what they’re doing. They search for an earthbending teacher, and do not find one. 

Yue learns that Sokka is funny, and holds so much responsibility on his shoulders. He gets flustered around Yue and thinks Suki is the best thing since polar bear seals. He loves his little sister but loves teasing her an equal amount. 

Yue learns that Katara is kind and angry and annoyed at being the youngest of their party. She complains that Sokka coddles her and she uses nearly every waterbending trick she learns to attack her brother. She still mourns her mother’s death and she’s worried about her father, and she wants to end the war. 

A Fire Nation envoy chases them. At first Yue’s not sure that it’s the same envoy every time, but she learns to recognize the old man who’s almost always in the party. He doesn’t wear armor while the others do. Yue and her friends are always quick to leave when they spot them, so Yue’s not exactly sure why they’re chasing them. 

Days turn to weeks, and while Yue’s learned a few things from various earthbenders, she hasn’t found anyone willing to travel. 

She’s beginning to think that she never will find a good teacher, that she will travel the world forever, picking up earthbending piece by piece, mastering it impossibly slowly.

But then they land in Gaoling. 

\----

Sokka drags them to the fight. He says that even if they don’t find any earthbending teacher, maybe Yue can learn fighting moves by watching. She doubts it. 

She’s been getting better at waterbending and fighting at the same time, due to a combination of watching Katara be creative and having to learn in the heat of the moment, as well as studying the waterbending scroll Katara and Suki stole and also sparring with Katara constantly. But she still doesn’t feel good at it. 

She watches the fights, tries to remember moves afterwards and fails. She tells this to Suki, who says, “Don’t worry, I’ll remember for you,” and then starts screaming about The Boulder with Sokka. 

“Ugh,” Katara says, rolling her eyes. “ _Nonbenders._ ” Yue laughs, and the announcer tells them that the Blind Bandit and The Boulder will now square off. 

The Blind Bandit is a tiny little girl, and looking at her against The Boulder almost looks silly. 

“She can’t really be blind, can she?” Katara asks. “It’s just a part of her character.”

“I think she is,” Suki says. 

“I think she is GOING DOWN!” Sokka yells. Yue giggles and says, “ _I_ think she’s familiar.”

She can’t quite place it, though, until the Blind Bandit laughs, and Yue is taken back to that swamp. 

“Oh, Spirits,” she whispers, and watches the Blind Bandit proceed to totally wreck The Boulder. 

After the fight, Yue leaps down from the stands and chases after the Blind Bandit. 

“Can I talk to you?” she asks. 

“No,” the Blind Bandit says, walking away, her championship belt around her shoulders. “I don’t do autographs.” 

She turns around a little to point at her foggy eyes. 

“That’s not--I need an earthbending teacher,” Yue says, running faster to walk beside the girl. 

“Then go to school,” the Blind Bandit says. 

“I think it’s supposed to be you,” Yue says. The Blind Bandit laughs. 

“Yeah, right,” she says, and then she opens up the stone wall with a wave of her hand, steps through, and vanishes, leaving Yue alone. 

\-----

Suki and Katara come back after Yue stands in line with Sokka to get The Boulder’s autograph. 

“The Blind Bandit’s a mystery,” Suki says. “She’ll come for a fight, and then vanish. Nobody knows who she is.”

“There’s a _bunch_ of bets about it, though,” Katara says. “It was like, insane.”

“Do you really want a twelve year old teaching you earthbending?” Sokka asks, carefully putting The Boulder’s autograph in his bag. 

“Yes,” Yue says. “I have another idea of how to track her down.” She turns around and walks up to someone random. “Hi,” she says, batting her eyelashes. “Is there anyone in town with a flying boar?”

“Flying boar’s the symbol of the Beifong family,” the guy says. “They’re the richest people in town.”

“Thank you!” Yue says, and she turns back to her friends.

“Flying boar?” Sokka asks. 

“I saw it in my vision. Come on, let’s go find the Beifong family.”

\-----

For about thirty seconds after they fly away with Toph, Katara is excited to have someone closer to her age. Then Toph starts talking, and the illusion shatters. 

\-----

“My parents didn’t decide to let me go,” Toph whispers one night. The moon is shining down on them, and Suki is curled on Yue’s lap, asleep, with her torso in Sokka’s sleeping bag. Sokka is also in the sleeping bag, snoring, and Katara is on Sokka’s other side, pressed against Appa. Toph is in her little rock tent, her knees clutched to her chest. She wiggles her toes. 

“I know,” Yue says, and Toph turns her face away from the fire, towards Yue. 

“You do?”

“Yes,” Yue says, leaning back, trying not to jostle Suki. “A year and a half ago, I accidentally earthbent. I was already a pretty good waterbender, or at least as good as a girl in the Northern Water Tribe can be, so I knew what it meant right away.” She inhales, then lets the breath out slowly. “I kept it a secret for about two months. Then a boy I barely know proposed to me, and my father told me I had to accept. For the good of the Tribe. He said it was my duty. But I knew that as the Avatar, it was more important to be there for the world. So I left. My father still doesn’t know I’m the Avatar.”

“Wow,” Toph says. “I just hated it at home, there was nothing to do with duty or whatever.”

“I know,” Yue says. “And maybe I only left because I wanted to.”

“Well, if I never go back to Gaoling again it’ll be too soon,” Toph says, spitting into the dirt. 

“I’m planning on going back, after the war is over,” Yue admits in a whisper. “My father will be mad, but I can still get married. I can still do my duty to the Tribe.”

“No offence, Princess, but that’s ridiculous,” Toph says. “If I were you, I’d marry Sokka just to annoy your dad.” Yue laughs. 

“It’s not that easy,” she says, wishing it was. 

“It could be,” Toph says, and then she yawns. “I’m going to bed.”

“Goodnight,” Yue whispers, and she lowers herself down. Suki’s weight is comforting against her stomach, and the moon shines down on her, washing her in it’s light. 

Yue closes her eyes, and goes to sleep. 

\-----

The library collapses, and Appa is gone. 

Sokka yells at Toph, Katara yells at Sokka, and Suki yells at everyone to _please_ shut up. Yue tells them about the comet, and Sokka insists they find Appa first. 

Everyone agrees, and they go after the sandbenders. 

They discover that Appa is in Ba Sing Se, and Suki says, “It might be a good idea to tell the Earth King about the eclipse, while we’re there.”

“Maybe it’s time to tell the world that the Avatar is back,” Yue says, and so it’s off to Ba Sing Se they go.

\-----

“You!” Yue says. 

“You!” the boy says. He’s wearing an apron, and his ponytail is cut off, his hair growing in short. It makes him look younger. He slides into the booth across from her, and for a minute they stare at each other. “Tea?” he says finally.

“It can wait,” Yue says. “You--you--I thought you were Fire Nation! What are you doing here?”

The boy looks uncomfortable. 

“Don’t say that too loud,” he says, looking around furtively. “I was accused of being a firebender like, last week, and got into a pretty public fight about it.

“You _are_ a firebender,” Yue says. 

“That’s not the point,” the boy says. “Anyway, my mission failed. So now I live here. Far, far away from the Fire Nation.”

“I see,” Yue says. 

“What about you?” he asks. 

“Oh, I’ve just...settled here,” she says. The king has refused to see them, but she and Toph will be sneaking into the Earth King’s bear’s birthday party later that night. 

“That’s good,” he says. “Been here long?”

“No,” she says. “You?”

“No,” he says. They smile at each other. An old man--perhaps the same old man who was with the Fire Nation group who had followed Appa until about the time they picked up Toph--comes up to them and grins. 

“Lee, you have made a friend!” he says. The boy turns red and says, “Not now, Uncle.”

“No, no, I would like to meet the young lady,” Uncle says, and he turns to her. 

“I’m...Katara,” Yue says, smiling at him. 

“A pleasure to meet you,” he says. “Any friend of Lee’s is a friend of mine.”

“Uncle,” Lee hisses, and his uncle chuckles. 

“I will leave you to it! Lee, remember to get your friend some tea!”

“I will!” Lee yells over his shoulder, then he turns around. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Yue says, giggling. “He’s sweet.”

“He’s okay,” Lee says, begrudgingly. His face is still red, and Yue realizes, suddenly, that he’s a firebender. 

“Lee,” she says carefully. “That mission you failed--were you looking for the Avatar?”

“Yes,” he says, his face shutting down. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why would you do that?” she says. “Nobody’s seen the Avatar in over a hundred years.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it!” Lee says, slamming his fist against the table, and Yue flinches. 

“Sorry,” she says. “Sorry. I guess I was just wondering what you would do if you found the Avatar.”

“I need to capture the Avatar,” Lee mutters. “My father…” His hand goes up to the scar on his face. “I would bring them back to my nation, and restore my honor, take my place at my father’s side. That’s what I would do.”

“Okay,” Yue says. So she will _not_ ask Lee to teach her how to firebend. She also decides not to ask him about his honor, or his father, and instead says, “Can I put in my tea order now?”

\------

“What’s this?” a familiar voice asks, and Yue turns to see Lee. The Jasmine Dragon is only a few blocks away, so it’s not unreasonable that he’d be out and about, Yue is just surprised to see him. He has come up next to her and Sokka, and he touches one of the missing posters Sokka had just put up. 

“We lost our bison,” Yue tells him. 

“Do you know this guy?” Sokka asks her, and she says, “Yeah, that’s Lee from the teashop, _Bato.”_

Sokka seems to understand her emphasis, and he nods, slings an arm around her shoulders. “Yeah, we can’t find him, even though he’s like the size of a building, so we’re putting up signs.”

“Oh,” Lee says, eyes flicking between them. “I didn’t know you...had an air bison.”

“That air bison basically raised me, dude,” Sokka says. 

“O...kay,” Lee says, sounding unconvinced. “How did you lose an entire bison in the middle of the city?”

“We obviously didn’t lose him in the city,” Sokka says, rolling his eyes. 

“Then why are you looking here?”

“We heard that he might be here,” Yue says. 

“Oh,” Lee says. “That’s...interesting.” He folds up the missing poster and puts it in his pocket. Yue hopes that’s a good sign. “I should be getting back to the teashop…”

“Okay,” Yue says. 

“It was nice seeing you, Katara. Bato,” Lee says, and then he turns around and leaves. Yue waves a little. 

“So we aren’t giving real names, except that Katara’s a real name of a person in our friend group,” Sokka says. He doesn’t move his arm from her shoulder. 

“It’s not _my_ name,” she says. “And it’s the first name I thought of.”

“I don’t know why we didn’t just give our real names,” Sokka grumbles. They start to walk away. “It’s not like we’re famous.”

Yue doesn’t say that Lee is Fire Nation. She doesn’t say that he’s chasing the Avatar. She doesn’t say that he’s probably the one who’s been chasing them ever since they left Kyoshi Island, and maybe even the one who attacked the Southern Water Tribe. She could say it, but she prays to Tui that Lee will never make the connection. 

\------

“Hey,” Lee says, and Yue turns around to look at him. She has all the takeout orders of her friends’ tea on a tray. Lee walks up to her. “I wanna show you something.”

“My tea will get cold,” Yue protests, and Lee says, “It’ll be fast. Probably.”

“Fine,” Yue says, and she follows Lee around the corner and to a park area, where there’s a fountain surrounded by unlit lamps. 

“Oh,” Lee says. “I’ll, um.” He looks around, sees that they are alone, and then she watches him firebend, turning on the lamps. They sparkle over the fountain, and Yue grins, delighted. 

“Lee, it’s beautiful!” she says. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Sometimes in the morning I come here to meditate.” 

“Thank you for showing me,” Yue says, and he smiles at her. She smiles back, and then says, “I really have to go, though.”

“Did your tea get cold? I can heat it up for you,” Lee says, and Yue says, “It’s fine. You probably shouldn’t firebend in public, though.”

“You’re right,” he mumbles, and she smiles at him and waves. 

“I’ll see you later?” she asks, and he nods at her. She leaves, and decides to show the fountain to Sokka and Suki tomorrow. 

\-----

The Dai Li do a lot of terrible things, in their time at Ba Sing Se, but the worst thing they do is capture Suki, hold her hostage.

Yue feels something shift inside her, feels something burn, as anger pours into her. Everything goes white, and she feels something inside her. A presence. Many presences. 

When everything fades, she’s standing around a scene of destruction--evidence of earthbending, people frozen in water all around her, even some fire. Dai Li agents are unconscious, and her friends are okay. 

“What happened?” Yue asks. 

“You went into the Avatar state,” Katara says, her eyes wide. “It was insane.”

“Your eyes went all white, and they were glowing, and so was your hair, and you looked like an angry spirit sent down to murder us all,” Sokka says, sighing. 

“It was really hot,” Suki confirms, and then Yue hears a noise--fire. She turns around as it approaches her and uses some of the convenient water all around to put out the jet of flames. 

Across the room from them stands Lee and Appa. Lee is staring, his eyes wide and his face angry. 

“You’re the Avatar?” he yells, and then without waiting for an answer he blows more flames at her. She blocks them with blasts of water. 

“Lee’s a firebender?” Sokka cries, and Yue says, “There’s no time! We have to leave!”

Toph throws rocks in Lee’s direction and the others scramble towards Appa and climb onto his back. 

“We should knock Lee out and turn him in,” Sokka says. 

“We should go,” Yue says. “We need to--I need to find a firebending teacher. I need to be three elements up for the eclipse.”

Toph uses a piece of stone under her feet to lift her up towards Appa, and Suki reaches for her arms, pulling her into the saddle. 

“Yip yip!” Katara yells, and Appa starts to fly. Lee sends blasts of fire after them, yelling angrily. 

But all too soon they’re in the air, flying away, leaving Lee behind them. 

\------

“There’s something chasing us,” Toph says, startling everyone awake. 

“What?” Yue says. 

“I can feel it,” Toph says. “Something’s coming. Something big.”

“Let’s go, then,” Sokka says, and he rushes everyone onto Appa’s back, and they fly for a few hours before they settle. Sokka and Suki and Katara are quick to go back to sleep, but Yue is too wired for that, and then before Toph can say anything, she feels it. 

“It’s back,” Yue says, poking Sokka, who’s drooling on her shoulder. They pack up camp again and get back on Appa. 

“Try and get some sleep,” Sokka calls over his shoulder. “I’ll try and get us as far away as we can, but--shit!”

He’s cut off by a lightning bolt near his ear. Yue turns around in the saddle and peers over the side, seeing some sort of large machine down below, almost certainly the source of the noise, with a girl on top of it. 

Even from this high up, Yue can see her grin, and she watches as the girl gears up and shoots more lightning at them.

“What the fuck!” Suki yells.

“The Fire Nation can shoot lightning now?” Katara cries. 

“Lightning and fire aren’t even the same--whatever!” Sokka says. “We need to either keep moving or stop and fight them.”

“I’ll try and earthbend from up here,” Yue says. “Toph, can you…?”

“I can’t see anything, Princess!” Toph yells. She’s holding on tight to Katara, and Yue concedes that that’s a fair point. She turns back around and raises rocks around the device, but they don’t do any damage. 

The machine chases them for hours. At one point the girl yells up, “I can do this all night, Avatar!”

  
  
  


Yue can tell that she’s right, that the machine won’t stop, and Appa is slowing down, and her own friends are running on fumes.

“We need to split up,” she says. “Lose sight of them for a minute, and then go in different directions. Hopefully they’ll chase me instead of you.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Sokka says. 

“Yue, those firebenders will capture you, or shock you full of lightning,” Suki says. “You’ll die.”

“If I die, go looking for babies in the earth kingdom until you find me again,” Yue says. 

“Don’t talk like that!” Katara cries. 

“I’ll just go into the Avatar state again,” Yue says. “I’ll be fine.” She is unconvinced that she even knows how to do that, but maybe it’ll just _happen._

“No, someone needs to go with you,” Suki says. 

“I’ll go,” all of Yue’s friends say together, and Yue thinks she might cry. 

“ _I’ll_ go,” Toph says. “Fans over here can protect Snoozles and Sugar Queen, but _I’m_ the greatest earthbender alive, and _I’ll_ protect the Avatar. Plus, I’m useless on Appa, but you guys aren’t.”

“Fine,” Suki says, looking like she’s about to cry, and Yue reaches for her, squeezes her hand. 

“You guys take Appa, and we’ll meet up in three days, okay?” Yue says. “Toph and I will be fine.”

“You’d better be,” Suki says, and Katara hugs her briefly before Yue stands up, grabs Toph’s hand. Sokka brings Appa down, closer to the ground, and Yue tells Toph that’s she’s going to jump, and she does, pulling Toph with her, and she earthbends a piece of land up to meet them. Once their feet are firmly on the ground, Toph takes charge of the earthbending, building a big wall up from the direction the machine is coming from. Appa makes a hard left and flies away, going higher and higher into the clouds. 

Yue and Toph don’t have to wait very long for the machine. 

This is what happens:

The girl with the lightning and blue fire flies over the wall, using flame under her feet as jets. She stands on top of it, hands on her hips, looking down at Toph and Yue, and then three other people join her--a girl in pink, a girl in dark red with black shiny hair and a knife in each hand, and Lee. 

Lee is dressed as a firebender again, and his arms are crossed over his chest. He scowls angrily at her. 

“Hello, Avatar!” the lightning girl calls. “Zuzu here needs to capture you. I’m sure you aren’t willing to come quietly?”

“Not on your life,” Toph yells, and both she and Yue shift into fighting positions. 

“Aww, isn’t that sweet,” the lightning girl says. “Sadly, even if you _are_ the Avatar, you’re outnumbered. You can’t beat us!”

“We’ll see about that,” Yue says, and then after that’s she’s not really sure what happens. When she thinks back on this fight later, she remembers lightning, she remembers the girl in pink, she remembers fire.

She remembers going into the Avatar state, and then bright, searing pain, the worst pain she’s ever felt--

and then nothing. 

\------

When Yue wakes up, she’s stiff, cold, and in a familiar room. 

She sits up rapidly, wondering if the last year and a half has just been a dream, but then pain shoots up her back and she sees Sokka and Suki curled up next to each other, asleep, against the opposite wall. Both are dressed in furs but neither have blankets or anything over them, and Yue thinks that they must be cold. She shifts, ready to move over to them, ready to demand answers--what are they doing _here?--_ but then someone comes in through her doorway.

It’s an unfamiliar Water Tribe man, and he looks first at Sokka and Suki, asleep against each other, and sighs. 

“Stubborn kids,” he murmurs, and then he turns to look at Yue, and blinks in surprise when he sees that’s she’s awake and sitting up. “Oh, damn. How long have you been awake?”

“Not long,” Yue says. “I’m sorry...who are you? What happened?”

“I’m Sokka and Katara’s dad, Hakoda,” the man says. “They picked me and my other men up when they rode north.”

“Okay,” Yue says. “Why would they do that?”

“You were dead, Yue,” Hakoda says uncomfortably. “Katara had an idea on how to best heal you, but she had to take you home to do it. I’m sorry.”

Yue wants to bury her face in her hands, but she thinks that would hurt. She closes her eyes instead. 

“The spirit water?” she asks.

“Yes,” Hakoda says. 

“Did Katara do it? Or did she let someone else…”

“No, Katara did it,” Hakoda says. “Um. Obviously your father knows you’re back, but we didn’t tell him that you’re the Avatar.”

“Thank you,” Yue says, and Hakoda nods at her, asks if she needs anything, and then leaves. Yue drags herself from her bed--and when’s the last time she slept in her own bed?--and then crawls over to Sokka and Suki, poking Sokka’s cheeks. 

“I’m awake,” she whispers. 

“Yue!” Sokka cries, and he hugs her. His excitement wakes Suki, who makes a sobbing noise and then joins in the hug. It hurts, kind of, but Yue hugs them back anyway. 

“I love you,” Suki whispers. “Yue, I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Yue says. “And you, Sokka. I’m sorry--I didn’t mean to worry you--” Sokka squeezes them tighter. For a minute, they have to just sit there and cry. 

When they finally pull back from each other, Sokka explains that the Southern Water Tribe men have joined with some Northerners to start planning an invitation during the eclipse. Suki explains that everyone in the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdoms think that the Avatar is dead, and then she tells Yue haltingly that the prince of the Fire Nation took all the credit for it, that he returned home after a years-long banishment and was given all the honor of the kingdom. 

“Oh, Lee,” Yue says at that, and Sokka says, “Actually, apparently his name is Zuko.”

They then go on to tell her that Katara bullied Pakku into training her more in the arts of waterbending, that Toph hates the cold, that Yue’s been out for weeks, and that her fiance is “an asshole”. 

Yue laughs until she starts crying again, and then they have to have another group hug all over again. 

\-----

Yue has always loved the spirit oasis, and she takes herself there to meditate. She breathes deeply and focuses on the fish, and she feels Aang’s presence, then Roku’s, then Kyoshi’s, then the presence of all of them at once. 

It centers herself, and she feels calm against the raging uncertainty inside her. 

Then she hears footsteps and she breaks her focus, but doesn’t move. 

“Yue,” her father says. 

“Dad,” she responds, and then she turns around and sees him standing over her. She reaches for him and he reaches for her, holds her close. 

“I already lost your mother, and I thought I lost you, too,” he says, rocking her back and forth like she’s a child again. “Yue, sweetheart, why did you leave?”

“Dad,” Yue says, and she thinks she might cry. “Dad, I’m the Avatar.”

“What?” he asks, tightening his hold. “You’re what?”

“I’m the Avatar,” she said. “I left to--to train, to learn how to become the Avatar properly, to--to defeat the Fire Lord and end the war.”

“You’re the Avatar?” her dad asks, finally pulling away from her to look her in the eyes. She nods, and points at one of the rocks around the edge of the spirit oasis and lifts it up, letting it hover in the air for a minute before she drops it gently to the ground. She huffs. 

“I don’t know how to fire or airbend, though,” she says. “There was someone who I thought I’d ask to teach me firebending, but he turned out--not good. And I don’t know where I’d start with airbending, but--don’t you see why I had to leave?”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t _tell_ me,” her father says, anguished. 

“I didn’t think you’d let me leave,” Yue whispers. “I--I have a duty, to the world. But I was always going to come back, after the war was over.” 

Her father hugs her again, then lowers her to the ground, so they’re both sitting in the grass. 

“Tell me,” he says. “Tell me about your travels.” Yue blinks, surprised, and then she does.

\-----

They leave the Northern Water Tribe a few weeks later and head down to the Fire Nation to prepare for the invasion. Yue can’t help but feel that she’s not powerful enough to take down the Firelord, but Toph reminds her she’ll have earth _and_ waterbending and he won’t have any. Yue wishes she knew how to airbend, but it’s not like she had anyone to ask. 

For the first time in a long time, Yue wears Water Tribe clothes outside of her nation, and she feels good about it. Suki tells her she looks good, too. Yue can’t help but feel uneasy, but she hopes she’s just being silly. 

Except, of course, that the invasion goes terrible, and the Water Tribe men get captured, and the lightning girl--Azula--chases Team Avatar around with her friends from the Dai Li, and Yue doesn’t even _see_ the Firelord. 

They retreat on Appa, who guides them to an Air Temple without anyone asking them to. It’s beautiful, tucked under a cliff, and once they’re sort of settled, Yue says, “So what now?” and nobody has an answer.

\------

“All along we’ve been saying that we need to defeat the Fire Lord _before_ Sozin’s Comet,” Sokka says. “But the comet gives a power boost to _all_ firebenders, right? So Yue would _also_ get a boost.”

“Yeah, sure, if only she could actually firebend,” Toph says, rolling her eyes. They’re sitting around the campfire, thinking about going to bed but not actually doing that yet.

“There must be some way to learn,” Yue says. “I’m sure not _every_ firebender wants the Fire Nation to win the war.”

“That’s ridiculous, of course they do,” Katara says. “That would be like a waterbender wanting the Fire Nation to win.”

“Well, the Fire Nation is wrong, so maybe some people realize that,” Sokka says. 

“I think we should kidnap a child,” Toph says, and everyone turns to look at her. “I’m a child, Katara’s a child, maybe you just need another one.”

Yue thinks of the only firebender Katara’s age she’s ever seen, and shudders. 

“Maybe I can teach myself,” she says doubtfully, pointing her hand at the campfire and willing it to do--something. It flares a little, sort of.

She sighs. 

“Let’s sleep on it,” Suki says. “We can figure it out in the morning.”

Yue puts out the fire with waterbending, and they retreat into the temple. Since it’s an air temple, there’s space for Appa, and Sokka goes to sleep in that room. Toph and Katara have a shared room next door, and there’s a third room for Suki and Yue, allegedly, but they go into the room with Sokka instead.

The three of them curl up next to Appa, and Suki drops right off to sleep, and pretty soon Sokka is snoring on Yue’s shoulder, but Yue can’t sleep. She can’t help but wonder what they’re going to do, how they’re going to make their next move. 

\-----

“Hello.” A voice cuts into their morning. Yue stops sparring with Sokka to turn and look and see Le--Zuko, standing there, dressed in casual Fire Nation clothes. He has the pink girl with him. “Zuko here.”

“And Ty Lee!” the pink girl says. 

Yue and her friends drop into fighting positions, but Zuko doesn’t attack. Neither does Ty Lee. 

“Right, and Ty Lee. I know you must be surprised to see us here.”

“Not really,” Sokka says. “Since you’ve been following us ever since Appa learned how to fly.”

“Oh,” Zuko says. “Right. Well, uh, I wanted to tell you that I’ve changed. And I’m good now. And, well, I think I should join your...group. And teach the Avatar how to firebend.” He looks at Yue pleadingly. 

“You want to _what_ now?” Toph asks. 

“How can you possibly think any of us would trust you?” Katara asks. “I mean, how stupid do you think we are?”

“You killed Yue!” Suki says. 

“That wasn’t me, that was Azula!” Zuko cries. “And she’s fine now!”

“This isn’t going very well,” Ty Lee stage-whispers to Zuko. “I told you I should’ve done the talking.”

“Not now, Ty Lee!” Zuko growls, then he takes a deep breath. “I’ve done _some_ good things, like--I freed your bison!”

Appa punctuates the statement by licking him. 

“Appa _does_ seem to like him,” Toph says. 

“I’m not buying it,” Sokka says. Yue looks at Zuko, and remembers him taking her to the Earth Kingdom. She remembers him taking her to the fountain at Ba Sing Se, about how he memorized her tea order. 

“Who burned your face?” she asks quietly. He looks surprised, and Ty Lee gapes from behind him. “I remember….when we first met, I thought you had been attacked by the Fire Nation.”

Zuko clenches his fist, then releases it. He takes a deep breath. 

“It was my father,” he says quietly. Katara gasps. Suki grabs Yue’s fingers. Sokka drops his boomerang. Zuko looks up, meets Yue’s eyes. “I want to take him down.”

Yue nods. 

“Fine,” she says. “You can teach me how to firebend.”

“But we’re watching you!” Sokka says, pointing at him. 

\------

Zuko and Yue walk up the steps to meet the Fire Masters. Zuko balances his flame easily, and whispers encouragement to Yue as they walk up. 

“I really hope this works,” Yue says, when they’re about five steps from the top. 

“Me too,” Zuko says, and then they reach the top, and meet the dragons. 

\-----

“Need meat, gone fishing,” Yue reads for Toph and Katara and Ty Lee. “ _And_ they took Appa.”

“Well, I hope that whatever fishing they do has great results, because now we’re _stuck_ here,” Katara moans. 

“I don’t think they’re fishing,” Ty Lee says. 

“Why not?” Yue asks, rolling up the note. 

“I don’t know,” Ty Lee says. “It just doesn’t make sense for Zuko and Suki and Sokka go to fishing together, that’s all. Why take Zuko?”

“You’re right,” Toph says. “It _is_ suspicious.” 

Three days later, Zuko, Suki, and Sokka come back, handfuls of fish and Sokka’s dad between them.

\-----

Yue lights the fire for them one night without using any flint. Yue lights the lanterns in the huge room where she, Appa, Sokka, and Suki are staying by punching her fist. Yue dances the Dancing Dragon with Zuko, over and over again. She puts her hands on Sokka’s cheeks and warms them up. She breathes little puffs of fire at Suki and learns how to release streams of fire from her feet when she kicks. 

She accidentally burns Zuko, a little, and she hovers water over the injury, heals him. 

“Just like the first time,” Zuko mutters, and she smiles at him. 

\-----

Watching Ty Lee and Suki spar is almost good enough to distract Yue from her worry for Katara. 

“Do you think she’ll actually kill him?” she asks Sokka, who’s sitting next to her, legs pressed against her legs, shoulders pressed against her shoulders, fingers loosely tied together. He swallows. 

“I hope not,” he says. “But also--he killed my mother.”

“Yeah,” Yue says, and she thinks of her impending fight with the Firelord. She doesn’t really want to kill him, but she knows there’s no other option. 

She squeezes Sokka’s fingers tighter, and refocuses on the spar.

\------

“Here’s my plan,” Sokka says. “Yue manifests as Aang, or Yengchen, and then one of them teaches _us_ how to airbend, and we learn all the movements, or whatever, and then we teach them back to Yue.”

“That is so stupid,” Katara says. 

“Maybe there’s some airbending texts?” Zuko asks. “Like, in some other airbending temple? Maybe something survived…”

“We already checked North, West, and now South,” Yue says. Her new lemur friend is sitting on her head, possibly eating her hair. She doesn’t mind. “We could head up back East, I guess.”

“It’s too bad we sunk that library and can never go back,” Suki says. “I bet they had some killer airbending instructions.”

“We could check places like that pirate ship where I found my waterbending scroll,” Katara says. 

“If any airbending scrolls exist, they would be _so expensive,”_ Yue says. “And we are _so_ broke.”

“Katara could steal another one,” Sokka says. “Or we could do my idea.”

“Or we could do the only thing that _actually makes sense,”_ Toph says. They all turn to look at her. “When Zuko’s fire broke, he went to the source to fix it. When I learned how to earthbend, I learned from the _source._ All you have to do is go to the source of airbending, and luckily for us we _have_ the source right here.”

“You mean Momo?” Sokka asks, pointing at Yue’s lemur. 

“No, you dunderhead!” Toph says. “Him!” 

And she points right at Appa.

\-----

“Okay, boy, we can do this,” Yue says. She and Appa are high up in the clouds. She’s piloting him, and they took off his saddle. Yue’s not really sure how to start, with this. Appa growls at her. 

“I know, I know,” she says, although she doesn’t. On her back she has an airbending glider that they found in the temple, but she doesn’t want to use it until she has any idea of how airbending works. She crawls off of Appa’s neck and heads for the back, where the saddle usually is. She looks down, to look at the ground, far below them. It’s getting dark, so she can’t really see it. 

She turns her attention to Appa’s tail, and watches it move up and down. She takes a deep breath and wonders why arrows on Appa’s fur, why arrows on airbending masters. Do they point to something?

In the distance, the moon is rising. _Tui, help me,_ Yue thinks, and then, _Aang, Yengchen, help me._

She closes her eyes and considers the air moving around her face, Appa’s fur steady under her, and she stands up. She opens the glider and holds on, jumping off of Appa, trusting he will catch her if she falls, remembering the people at the Northern Air Temple who couldn’t bend but flew anyway. 

The glider holds her up, and Yue feels tiny, holding herself up with the vast air all around her. She turns to look at Appa, to watch him. She remembers what the dragons had taught her, and she opens her mind to learn from Appa, too. 

\-----

Yue flies down beside Appa, circles around the campfire twice, and then lands. Only Zuko and Sokka are still awake, the others presumably in their rooms.

“Well, you’re flying,” Sokka says. “That’s a good sign!”

Yue cups her hands and sends a blast of air at the fire, putting it out, then she uses air to ruffle their shirts and hair before firebending the campfire back. 

“Tada,” she says, and Sokka and Zuko both clap. 

“Good job!” Sokka says. Zuko gives her a thumbs up.

“I don’t really know much yet,” Yue says. “But it’s a start.”

\-----

Yue makes big sweeps of air that stir up dust. She practices blasting people backwards with streams of air and doing big loops with her glider. She flies next to Momo and Appa and studies them both, trying to comprehend how it works and also trying to listen to Aang’s voice, whispering in her ear, that airbending is all about _joy._

Yue makes a small tornado, and Zuko tells them about his father’s invasion plan. 

\-----

“Before we die,” Yue says, pulling Sokka and Suki aside. “I need to tell you something.”

“We aren’t gonna die,” Suki says. 

“I love you,” Yue says. “Both of you--you make me happy, when everything is so terrible. You make me want to forget my duty to my father and live in the South Pole or Kyoshi Island or even in that swamp--anywhere, as long as it’s with you.”

“We love you too,” Suki says, and she kisses her. 

“You two are the most beautiful girls I’ve ever met,” Sokka says when they pull apart. “I don’t know why you pay any attention to _me_ when you have each other, but I’m so glad you do.”

And he kisses her, too, and suddenly Yue feels like she might understand airbending, after all. 

\------

Yue doesn’t remember much of her fight with Ozai, but she does remember this:

Her hand, encased in ice, pointed to a dagger, rushing towards his face, while he’s pinned by rocks, and then Aang’s presence, all around her, and she lets the ice melt, and presses a thumb to his forehead and another to his chest, and--

\-------

For fourteen years, she was Princess Yue, and for two years after she was just Yue. 

But when she stands next to Zuko, dressed in Water Tribe formalwear and holding his hand, as he accepts the crown, and thanks “Avatar Yue”, she thinks she likes that title the best.

\------

She doesn’t go back home, and she doesn’t marry Hahn. 

\--------

Yue finds herself sitting in the Firelord’s bed, her hand on his stomach and his on her back. The scars match, and her free hand trembles. 

“I’ve loved you since the day I met you,” he whispers into the space between them. 

“I know,” Yue says. “I know.”

\----------

This is what happens:

Years pass. 

Years pass, and they are good, and they are peaceful. Yue calls each year beautiful, and Sokka laughs at her, but Suki always tells him that everything is beautiful when there’s no war. 

Yue goes to weddings, to coronations, to births, to funerals. She attends coming-of-age ceremonies and she visits the spirit world. She gets married and she gets pregnant and she energybends the people that ask for it. 

She rebuilds a nation, and she feels Aang and Yengchen and hundreds of Avatars past with her, every step of the way. 

And then--

“Someone is attacking the spirit oasis, Avatar Yue!” a man says, bursting into her igloo. Yue gets to her feet, glad she’s already in the Northern Water Tribe. Sokka jumps to his feet beside her, and together they rush to Yue’s old home. 

When they get inside the oasis, it is an old man they encounter. He has a pair of young Firebenders with him, and one of them shoots fire at her, yelling “Long live Ozai!”

It’s been years since Yue heard those words, and in fact Ozai is not even alive anymore, and she blows the fire away dismissively, but then something

happens.

Everything goes dark, and Yue feels empty, lost, like she’s missing a part of herself. She traps the firebenders and the old man in stone, and she runs to the spirit oasis, kneels beside it’s water. The white fish is dead, and Yue knows what that means. 

“No,” she whispers. “What did you do?”

“I am the moonkiller!” the old man yells. “I am going to restore honor and glory to the Fire Nation! I will be great again!”

“Shut up,” Sokka says, and then he kneels beside Yue. “What will you do?”

Yue looks at the representation of Tui, dead. She looks at La, who stares at her, and she takes a deep breath.

“The moon gave me life,” she says. “Maybe I can give it back.”

“No!” Sokka cries. “No, Yue, you can’t!”

She turns to him and puts her hand on his cheek. 

“Sokka,” she says. “I’m the Avatar. I’m the bridge between the spirit and the physical world, and I was chosen by Tui, long ago. I _have_ to do this.”

“I can’t let you,” Sokka cries, tears streaming down his face. “Yue, I love you--we love you!” 

Yue leans in and kisses him. “Tell them I love them.”

“Yue,” Sokka repeats. “No.”

She thinks of Zuko, and Suki. She thinks of their three daughters, all grown now, and she says, “It’s my duty, Sokka.”

She leans into the pond, and puts her hands on the white fish, and everything goes black.

\-----

Across the world, in Zaofu, Suyin pants. 

“Is it over?” she asks, groaning, and Kya grins at her. 

“It is!” she says. “Congratulations, Su, it’s a girl!” Kya hands her her baby, and Suyin holds her close with careful hands. Bataar leans in next to her, and Suyin looks over her baby, tiny and perfect, wailing her little head off.

“Oh,” Bataar says. “She's beautiful.”

“What are you going to call her?” Kya asks, wiping off her hands. 

“Opal,” Suyin answers, and she swears that the baby smiles. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> for the record, katara & ty lee got married and kya is their daughter.
> 
> also after yue died azula captured toph who invented metalbending & escaped with yue's body & then met up with the friends and they headed north to resurrect her. 
> 
> OH also yue's daughter that she gave birth to is an airbender amen
> 
> thanks for reading! comments & kudos are always enjoyed!
> 
> if u have any questions or wanna talk or smthn my tumblr is @bowspop

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Earth, Fire, Air, Water... Boomerang?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26433325) by [maddiebug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maddiebug/pseuds/maddiebug)




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